Shinnecock bodes ill for Ryder Cup

The only things running faster than the greens at Shinnecock Hills last week were the Europeans. Twelve of them missed the cut and the other seven couldn't get out of New York fast enough.

The groundstaff would have done better on the final day of the US Open to have turned their hoses on Sergio Garcia and his chums, as tempers reached boiling point.

By then the greens resembled the living dead and no amount of water could save them. As Robert Allenby, the only player to match par in the fourth round, observed of the ongoing attempts to spray the putting surfaces: "The water was nearly evaporating before it even hit the green". The same could be said of the European challenge.

One of the more surprising names to miss the cut was Justin Rose, who led the Masters after two rounds and has been preparing specifically for the majors this season. He was playing magnificently in practice, but couldn't take his form into the championship.

After his second round at the French Open Rose said: "When a course is as extreme as Shinnecock there is much more emphasis on the short game. The Americans' short games are far and away better than the guys in Europe. They tend to get it up and down out of a ball washer.

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"Maybe it is because their practice facilities are better as a general rule and because they play on more consistent surfaces than we do in Europe. Their Tour tries to regulate the speed of the greens, the length of the rough and the depth of the sand."

Several Europeans bore out Rose's point. Garcia, Padraig Harrington, Phillip Price and Joakim Haeggman all finished in the top 20 for greens hit in regulation. But that quartet simply couldn't cope with surfaces as slick and shiny as a designer bathroom. Actually, let's not call them greens any more. They were more like car bonnets or satellite dishes.

The only Europeans who were anywhere near the top of the putting statistics were Lee Westwood (seventh) and Daniel Chopra. Phillip Price finished plumb last, taking 36 putts on the final day and never taking fewer than 30 in any round. That was a great pity because it was a course that he felt he could do well on and he hit more fairways than either Retief Goosen or Phil Mickelson.

Chubby Chandler, the manager of several of the European players and a former pro himself, has several theories as to why the Europeans couldn't cope. He believes that they will never have seen greens that fast in Europe and that most of them do not currently have the experience, guile or patience to do well in the US Open. Chandler thought that Bernhard Langer would have thrived if he had been able to play.

After a last-round 79 Westwood came off the course laughing, having moved up eight places, and said it was the hardest thing that he had ever done. He had the putting touch and patience to somehow survive, but the top three proved that Blank Frank was more the sort of man to really prosper at Shinnecock.

Chandler said of Goosen, Mickelson and Jeff Maggert, "You have one man who is totally unflappable, one who is high on life and one who every day looks as if his dog has died."

The US Open rewards the stonewall stoicism of Buster Keaton. Goosen did twitch a face muscle when he holed for a bogey on the 12th but other than that, the heckling of the crowd was received with a cold indifference.

Rose admits that he lacked that sort of focus. When there was a weather delay at the end of the first day Rose was sitting around talking to his family and friends.

He had not expected to go back out and acknowledges that he had mentally switched off. When the players were suddenly summoned Rose resumed with three consecutive bogeys.

"My form was good going in but my week slipped away right there." he said. "It was a valuable lesson. It is such a fine line at this level and guys like Tiger and Ernie have learned to walk that line. We're every bit as talented but perhaps we don't know what makes us tick yet."

Doubtless the Americans will have noticed the comparative fallibility of the Europeans when they go about setting up Oakland Hills for the Ryder Cup.

Haeggman, who could well play himself out of the assistant captaincy and into the team, said after the US Open: "Most of us just aren't used to these fast, sloping greens and we struggled. I'm sure the Americans will have taken note of that and we can expect more of the same [at the Ryder Cup]."

Bernhard Langer, the captain of the team, apparently disagrees. "I don't think they are going to go to that extreme," he said this week. "I hope not and if they do it will be just as bad for their own players. But I have never seen a Ryder Cup venue set up like that."

If Langer really thinks that it will be just as bad for the Americans, then he needs to do his research. The 10 players who currently occupy the automatic top-10 positions on the US team averaged 72.6 at Shinnecock. The top-10 Europeans on the Ryder Cup table averaged just over 74. That margin is the equivalent of several lengths in horse racing.